Sikhism: The Ten Gurus and the Living Book
By DailyDestiny Editorial Team
If you have been invited to a gurdwara or are curious about the turban and the free kitchen, here is what Sikhs believe, in plain words. Covers Guru Nanak, the ten Gurus, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Khalsa and five Ks, langar and daily practice.
On this page
What is Sikhism and what do Sikhs believe?
Imagine you have had a long, lonely week, and a Sikh coworker asks if you want to come to the gurdwara on Sunday. You say yes, then the worry starts. Do you cover your head? Will you have to pray? Will people wonder why you are there?
The short answer: Sikhism is a monotheistic religion that began in the Punjab region of South Asia in the late fifteenth century with Guru Nanak's teaching. Sikhs believe in one formless creator, the equality of every human being, and a life of honest work, sharing and constant remembrance of the divine name. And you will be welcomed and fed, not quizzed.
Sikh means learner. Sikhs hold that the one reality behind everything is Ik Onkar, never born, never dying, with no image and no human incarnation. Liberation, in Sikh terms release from the cycle of birth and death into union with it, comes through naam simran, remembrance of the name, with the Guru's guidance and divine grace, not ritual, pilgrimage or self-denial. The obstacle is haumai, the ego that makes you the center of the universe.
Sikh ethics live inside ordinary life: marry, work, raise a family, serve. Monasticism, celibacy, begging, caste, priesthood, image worship and astrological fatalism are all rejected.
Scripture opens with the Mul Mantar, the creed: one being, truth by name, creator, without fear, without enmity, timeless in form, unborn, self-existent, known by the Guru's grace. Without enmity rules out a god who takes sides. Unborn rules out avatars, the sharpest break with Nanak's Hindu setting.
Sikhs describe the world as running on hukam, the divine order, and your task is to bring your life into line with it, not bargain for exceptions. Like a river, you can swim with the current or wear yourself out against it.
A nineteenth-century colonial reading, still repeated, called Sikhism a blend of Hinduism and Islam. Sikh scholars reject it, and the Singh Sabha reform movement, founded at Amritsar in 1873, formed partly to refute it.
Guru here names an office, not a charismatic individual. It is also the Indian astrological name for Jupiter, an unrelated overlap search results blur. For guru devotion to a living teacher, see Neem Karoli Baba: Core Teachings, Key Ideas and Practices.
What does Ik Onkar mean?
One reality, the first phrase of the Guru Granth Sahib. Ik is the numeral one, written as a digit; Onkar names the being that runs through everything. The symbol joins that numeral to an open-ended stroke, read as saying the divine is single, undivided and everywhere, not housed in a temple or image.
What is Waheguru?
The most common Sikh name for God, usually translated wondrous teacher or enlightener, from wahe, an exclamation of wonder, plus guru. It is the word repeated in naam simran, and the greeting Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh belongs to the Khalsa. Scripture also uses Hari, Ram, Allah, Gobind and many other names for the same reality.
Does Sikhism teach reincarnation?
Yes. A soul passes through many births before human form, and human life is the opening where liberation becomes possible. Mukti comes through naam and grace, not merit, ascetic feats or ritual, and someone who reaches it while alive is jivan mukt. This site's reincarnation guide compares the Sikh view with Hindu, Buddhist and Jain accounts.
Who was Guru Nanak and how did the Sikh tradition begin?
If you have ever felt stuck in a job that pays the bills but feeds nothing else, the way Sikhism began may land close to home.
Guru Nanak, 1469 to 1539, was born at Talwandi near Lahore, now Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, into a Hindu Khatri family whose head, Kalu, kept accounts for the local landlord. Nanak married, had two sons, and worked as a storekeeper for the governor at Sultanpur Lodhi.
Around thirty, he went to bathe in the river Bein and was gone three days. Tradition has him reappearing with a line that set the course of everything after: there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.
He left the job and spent roughly two decades traveling, by tradition on four long trips called udasis, often with Bhai Mardana, a Muslim musician who played the rebab while Nanak sang. He is said to have reached Assam, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Mecca and Baghdad.
Around 1522 he settled at Kartarpur on the Ravi, farmed, and built a community around three habits Sikhs still keep: the shared meal, singing together and remembrance of the name.
We know what Nanak taught unusually well: roughly 974 of his hymns sit in the Guru Granth Sahib in his own words. What he did is hazier. The stories come from the janamsakhis, which historians read as devotion rather than biography, since the Puratan and Bala traditions disagree on routes and the miracles follow familiar patterns.
The hymns are unimpressed by religious machinery. Nanak mocked the sacred thread, ritual bathing, throwing water toward the sun for dead ancestors, and the pretensions of Brahmin and qazi alike.
His choice of successor mattered as much. Passing over his sons, he chose a disciple, Lehna, renamed him Angad, and bowed to him, so Sikh authority would move by proven fitness.
Nanak died at Kartarpur in 1539. The shrine is now in Pakistan, reachable from India through the Kartarpur Corridor, opened in November 2019.
What happened at the river Bein?
Tradition says Nanak waded into the Kali Bein at Sultanpur Lodhi around 1499, did not come out, and was presumed drowned. Three days later he returned, saying he had been taken into the divine presence and given the work of repeating the name. His first recorded words, no Hindu and no Muslim, meant neither label alone makes a person true.
Did Guru Nanak try to combine Hinduism and Islam?
No. He used both vocabularies because both surrounded him, and criticized both for putting ritual in place of honesty, but he presented his teaching as revealed. Rejecting avatars, image worship, caste and ritual purity put him outside Hindu orthodoxy; never accepting the finality of Muhammad's prophethood or Islamic law put him outside Islam.
What are the janamsakhis?
Story collections about Nanak's life, written from the seventeenth century on in competing versions, including the Puratan, Bala and Miharban traditions. Sikhs read them devotionally. Historians treat them as evidence of how later generations saw Nanak, since they contradict each other on dates and routes and carry the genre's usual miracles.
Who were the ten Sikh Gurus and what did each one add?
Almost everything you see in a gurdwara was added by one of ten people over about two centuries, 1469 to 1708, like a relay where the baton grows heavier with each hand.
Nanak, 1469 to 1539: the teaching and the three habits.
Angad, from 1539: collected Nanak's hymns; credited with standardizing Gurmukhi, the scriptures' script.
Amar Das, from 1552: twenty-two preaching districts called manjis, a rule that anyone seeking an audience eat in langar first, and open opposition to sati and the veil.
Ram Das, from 1574: founded the city that became Amritsar and composed the Lavan, the four hymns sung at every Sikh wedding since. Attend one and you will hear them.
Arjan, from 1581: built Harmandir Sahib, compiled the Adi Granth in 1604, executed at Lahore in 1606, the first Sikh martyr.
Hargobind, his son, from 1606: took up arms and built the Akal Takht.
Har Rai, from 1644: kept his grandfather's mounted retinue, and sent his elder son Ram Rai when Aurangzeb summoned him to Delhi.
Har Krishan, from 1661: Guru at five, dead of smallpox in 1664, months short of eight.
Tegh Bahadur, from 1665: beheaded in Delhi in 1675.
Gobind Singh, from 1675: founded the Khalsa in 1699 and closed the human succession in 1708.
Succession ran on fitness, not birth; one light, Sikhs say, passed through ten bodies. Passed-over relatives rarely accepted it. Nanak's elder son Sri Chand founded the ascetic Udasi order. Arjan's elder brother Prithi Chand and his line, the Minas, ran a rival claim for decades with their own manuscripts. Har Rai disowned Ram Rai for altering a line of scripture to please Aurangzeb, and Ram Rai's followers became a separate sect at Dehradun.
Gobind Singh's four sons all died before him in the winter of 1704 to 1705: the elder two in battle at Chamkaur, the younger two, small children, executed at Sirhind after refusing to convert. Sources disagree on the younger boys' ages, usually printed as about six to nine. It is hard to read without feeling it.
Gobind Singh died at Nanded in 1708 of an assassin's wounds. Having no heir was not why he ended human Guruship. He had already split the office: Guru Granth, the scripture, holding doctrinal authority, and Guru Panth, the assembled Khalsa, deciding together.
Why were two of the Gurus executed?
Arjan died at Lahore in 1606 under the Mughal emperor Jahangir, whose own memoirs record the decision to move against him. Tegh Bahadur was beheaded in Delhi in 1675 under Aurangzeb. Tradition holds he died defending Kashmiri Hindu Brahmins' right to their own religion: a martyr for a faith not his own.
Who was Guru Har Krishan?
The eighth Guru, installed at five in 1661, dead of smallpox in 1664, the shortest tenure of any Guru. Sikh accounts describe him tending the sick in a Delhi epidemic before catching it. Gurdwara Bangla Sahib stands where he stayed, and its water tank is associated with him.
Why did the Gurus begin carrying weapons?
After his father's execution, Hargobind put on two swords at his 1606 installation, miri and piri, temporal and spiritual authority, and built the Akal Takht facing Harmandir Sahib, giving politics a seat opposite worship. Sikh teaching since treats armed defense of the defenseless as a duty, legitimate only after other means fail.
Why is the Guru Granth Sahib treated as a living Guru rather than a book?
The first time you see a book carried on someone's head, fanned, and put to bed at night, it can be startling. Here is why.
In 1708 at Nanded, Guru Gobind Singh passed the office of Guru to the scripture itself instead of naming an eleventh human. So the volume gets the protocol of a sovereign teacher.
It rests on a raised platform, a takht, under a canopy, on cushions, wrapped in cloths called rumalas. An attendant waves a chaur, a whisk of white hair, over it, a gesture from royal courts. It is carried on the head, opened at dawn in a ceremony called prakash, and laid to rest at night in a separate room in sukhasan. Nobody sits higher than it or turns their back on it.
Questions go to it by opening at random for a hukamnama, the day's reading. Ever opened a book at random, hoping for a word meant just for you? This is that instinct made sacred.
Any room with a properly installed Guru Granth Sahib is a gurdwara; without it, no building is, however grand.
The standard printing runs 1,430 pages with fixed pagination, so a citation lands on the same line in any standard copy, though older hand-written volumes differ.
Guru Arjan compiled the first version, the Adi Granth, in 1604, dictating to the scribe Bhai Gurdas, and installed it at Harmandir Sahib. Guru Gobind Singh made the final version, adding his father Guru Tegh Bahadur's hymns.
It is arranged by thirty-one musical raags, so hymns are ordered by how they are sung, not by author or topic. Six Gurus contributed, and so did fifteen bhagats from outside the community, among them Kabir, the Muslim Sufi Farid, Namdev, and Ravidas, born into a leatherworking caste treated as untouchable. Their inclusion is doctrinal, not decorative.
The separate Dasam Granth, associated with Gobind Singh, has had its authorship argued over for more than a century and was never given Guruship. For authority passed through a reborn person instead, see The 14th Dalai Lama: Core Teachings, Key Ideas and Practices.
Who wrote the Guru Granth Sahib?
Six Gurus: Nanak, Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das, Arjan and Tegh Bahadur. Beside them sit fifteen bhagats of Hindu and Muslim background, including Kabir, Farid, Namdev and Ravidas, plus court bards and Sikhs like the musicians Satta and Balwand. Unusually for a scripture, Guru Arjan selected and arranged it himself.
Is bowing to the Guru Granth Sahib a form of image worship?
Sikhs say no. The reverence goes to the shabad, the divine word, not paper and ink, and Sikhism forbids images of the divine and keeps no consecrated statue. Some inside the community worry the ceremony drifts toward the ritualism Nanak attacked; the standard answer is that the honor belongs to the word.
What is an akhand path?
An unbroken reading of the whole scripture aloud, about forty-eight hours, readers taking turns. Families hold one for weddings, deaths, house moves and anniversaries. A sahaj path is the same reading spread over weeks or months. Neither is required, and both are common.
What is the Khalsa and what do the five Ks mean?
If you have wondered what the steel bracelet on a Sikh friend's wrist means, it starts here.
The Khalsa is the initiated order Guru Gobind Singh founded on Vaisakhi in 1699 at Anandpur Sahib. Tradition says he asked a large crowd for a head, led one volunteer at a time into a tent, and came out with a bloodied sword, until five had gone in. All five walked out alive, in new clothes.
They are the Panj Piare, the five beloved: Daya Singh, Dharam Singh, Himmat Singh, Mohkam Singh and Sahib Singh, from different regions and castes, including castes then treated as low. He initiated them with amrit, sugar water stirred with a double-edged khanda during prayers, named them Singh, then knelt and asked them to initiate him, placing himself under his own new discipline.
Khalsa Sikhs keep uncut hair and carry a comb, a steel bracelet, a short sword and a particular undergarment. Initiation names four prohibitions: cutting hair, tobacco, adultery, and meat from ritual slaughter. Alcohol and other intoxicants are ruled out separately in the code's general guidance.
Each K is practical before symbolic:
Kesh, uncut hair, accepts the body as given and leaves you nowhere to hide.
Kangha, a small wooden comb, keeps it disciplined, read as rejecting the ascetic's matted hair.
Kara, an iron or steel bracelet, is a reminder on the hand that acts. You notice it just as you reach for something you should not.
Kachhera, drawstring underclothing, allowed movement on horseback and stands for sexual restraint.
Kirpan, a sword, obliges you to defend anyone under attack.
The Sikh Rehat Maryada, worked on from 1931 by a committee of scholars, was approved by the general body of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee on February 3, 1945. It is still the worldwide reference, a short text closer to a summary than a legal code.
No census counts the initiated, generally taken to be a minority. A keshdhari Sikh keeps the hair without amrit; a sahajdhari Sikh follows the teaching without the outward form.
What are the five Ks?
Kesh, kangha, kara, kachhera (a specific style of cotton undershorts) and kirpan, each starting with K in Punjabi. An initiated Sikh keeps all five on the body at all times, even sleeping and bathing, and removing them is a serious breach.
What happens at an amrit sanchar?
The initiation needs six initiated Sikhs, five to give amrit and one to read the Guru Granth Sahib, which must be present. Sugar crystals are stirred into water with a double-edged sword during five prayers, then given to the candidate's eyes, hair and mouth. The candidate accepts the code and four prohibitions. Men and women take the same initiation.
Do you have to join the Khalsa to be a Sikh?
No. Roughly as the Rehat Maryada puts it, a Sikh believes in one God, the ten Gurus and the Guru Granth Sahib, follows their teaching and holds no other religion. Initiation is the expected direction, not the entry fee. Nobody counts who has taken amrit, so the claim that most have not is an impression, not a measurement.
What happens inside a gurdwara, and what is langar?
Back to that Sunday invitation. Here is what you will see, so you can walk in calm.
A gurdwara is a Sikh place of worship; langar is its free kitchen, feeding anyone of any religion or none. Outside, a flag called the nishan sahib marks it, saffron in most places, though the code allows blue.
You remove shoes, wash hands and cover your head, men and women alike, with scarves at the door if you forget. The hall has no altar and no seats. The Guru Granth Sahib sits on its platform at one end, and everyone sits on the floor facing it, all at the same height. Arrivals walk to the front, bow, usually leave a small offering, and sit.
The service has kirtan, hymns sung to harmonium and tabla; katha, explanation of the text; the Ardas, a standing group prayer; and a hukamnama read at random. Then karah prasad, a warm pudding, is given to everyone from one bowl.
Afterward you eat langar together in rows on the floor, a stranger on one side, a grandmother on the other, the same food on every plate.
Guru Nanak started langar and Guru Amar Das made it a rule: anyone seeking an audience ate in the kitchen first, in the same row as everyone. Tradition says the emperor Akbar complied. The target was caste, since purity rules forbade sharing cooked food across caste lines, so the meal was an argument as much as a meal.
The food is vegetarian so anyone can eat it, and volunteers cook, serve and clean. Harmandir Sahib's kitchen in Amritsar runs nonstop, and the managing committee counts daily meals in the tens of thousands, a figure no independent audit has checked.
Groups such as Khalsa Aid, founded in 1999, carry the model into disaster relief, running field kitchens for people with no link to Sikhism. The congregation pays, and the labor counts as worship.
What is karah prasad?
A sweet pudding of roughly equal parts wheat flour, clarified butter and sugar, cooked in an iron pan and given at the end of every service. Everyone gets it in cupped hands from the same batch, whatever their caste, religion or status, which is the point. Refusing it reads as a slight.
Who leads the service, since Sikhism has no priests?
Nobody is ordained. A granthi, custodian and reader of the Guru Granth Sahib, is hired and dismissible by the congregation and has no sacramental power an ordinary Sikh lacks. Ragis are trained kirtan musicians. Any Sikh, man or woman, who reads the scripture properly may lead, and elected committees run gurdwaras.
What do the khanda and the nishan sahib mean?
The khanda emblem shows a double-edged sword in the center, a circular chakkar around it, and two curved kirpans crossed outside, the miri and piri pair Hargobind took up in 1606. The nishan sahib, the tall flag outside, usually saffron, sometimes blue, carries it. Many gurdwaras replace its cloth yearly, done by the congregation, not a caretaker.
What does a Sikh actually do each day?
If you long for a spiritual life that does not ask you to quit your job or move to a mountain, the Sikh day is built for exactly that.
It starts before dawn at amrit vela, with a bath and the morning nitnem. The Rehat Maryada names Japji Sahib, Jaap Sahib and the Tav-Prasad Savaiye for morning, Rehras Sahib at sunset and Kirtan Sohila before sleep. Common practice adds Chaupai Sahib and Anand Sahib in the morning, so prayer books usually carry five. The Ardas closes morning and evening.
In between runs naam simran, the name held quietly under whatever you are doing: walking, cooking, driving, working. Like background music that sets the mood of a room.
Sikhism gives no credit for withdrawal. The day rests on naam japna, remembering the name; kirat karo, honest work; and vand chhako, sharing what you earn. Many give dasvandh, a tenth of income.
Seva, unpaid service, is weekly, and it means the dishes: an hour on the shoe rack or peeling onions in the langar kitchen. There is no Sabbath obligation, though most congregations meet on the local weekend day.
All this works against haumai, the I-am-ness that puts self at the center. Sikh teaching names five forms: kaam, lust; krodh, anger; lobh, greed; moh, attachment; ahankar, pride. Against them stand truth, contentment, compassion, humility and love. Which of the five do you recognize in yourself today?
The ego-ruled person is manmukh, facing their own mind; the one turned toward the teaching is gurmukh. Technique alone will not do it. Scripture insists liberation comes by nadar, grace, and effort without grace makes a well-behaved ego, not a free person.
Some count Waheguru on a mala, others repeat it silently with the breath, but no posture, breathing method or energy system is prescribed. Auspicious days, planetary remedies and horoscopes carry no weight; the Gurus dismissed the idea that a timing chart governs a life. For that system on its own terms, see Vedic Astrology Guide: Complete Introduction to Jyotish Shastra.
What is nitnem?
Daily discipline, the set prayers. Japji Sahib is by Guru Nanak; Jaap Sahib, the Tav-Prasad Savaiye and Chaupai Sahib are attributed to Guru Gobind Singh; Anand Sahib is by Guru Amar Das. Many read them from a gutka, a pocket prayer book.
What is naam simran?
Continuous remembrance of the name, usually Waheguru, in the mind or aloud. It can be a seated session, sung as kirtan, or carried through work, which Sikh teaching prefers. The aim is a mind filled by the name instead of the ego. It is devotion, not an energy technique.
What is dasvandh?
A tenth of earnings given to the community and people in need, traced to Guru Ram Das and Guru Arjan, who needed funds to build Amritsar and Harmandir Sahib and appointed collectors called masands. Nobody audits it. It is a moral expectation, not a tax, and many give labor instead.
What does Sikhism teach about caste, gender and service to others?
If you have ever been made to feel smaller because of where you were born or who you are, this part of Sikh teaching speaks straight to you.
Sikhism rejects caste as spiritually meaningless, holds women equal to men in every religious respect, and makes unpaid service a duty, not a charitable extra.
Guru Nanak asked what caste could mean when the same light sits in everyone. The Gurus attacked its machinery: the shared kitchen, the shared water tank at Goindval, the shared bowl of karah prasad and the common surnames Singh and Kaur all cut across caste on purpose. Scripture holds hymns by men of castes treated as untouchable, Ravidas among them, beside the Gurus' own.
Guru Amar Das appointed women to preach, argued against sati and the veil, and backed widow remarriage, none of it ordinary in the sixteenth century. The Rehat Maryada draws no line between men and women in the roles it describes: a woman may be one of the five who give amrit, the only condition on kirtan singers is being Sikh, and any Sikh the congregation approves may lead a wedding. Anyone may enter a gurdwara, and no caste or status distinction may be drawn inside.
The Ardas ends asking for sarbat da bhala, the welfare of all, not just Sikhs.
Doctrine and practice have never fully matched, and Sikhs say so. Caste survives as a marriage rule and identity: Jat, Khatri, Arora, Ramgarhia and Mazhabi are live categories, matrimonial ads name them, and caste-based gurdwaras exist in Punjab and abroad.
The Ravidassia community went further. After Sant Ramanand was shot dead in a Vienna temple in May 2009, its leaders declared a separate religion at Varanasi in January 2010 and later adopted their own scripture, the Amritbani Guru Ravidass.
Women do not perform kirtan inside the sanctum at Harmandir Sahib, though no written rule requires it, as Sikh women's groups keep pointing out. The Punjab assembly asked for change in a November 2019 resolution; the managing committee has not acted.
The 2011 census counted 846 girls per 1,000 boys aged six and under in Punjab, against 919 nationally, among India's most skewed ratios. The Akal Takht issued an edict against female foeticide on April 18, 2001, addressed to Sikhs.
This is not an outsider's complaint. Sikh reformers have said it since the Singh Sabha period: the scripture is clear, and the community is not.
What is seva?
Unpaid service as worship, in three forms: tan seva, physical work like cooking, cleaning shoes or washing dishes; man seva, mental work like teaching or study for the community; and dhan seva, giving money or goods. It is meant to be humble, unglamorous work, because the ego is the target.
Can anyone become a Sikh?
Yes. Khalsa initiation is open to any adult who accepts the code, men and women alike. Sikhs run no missions and rarely proselytize, so conversion tends to follow contact, not recruitment. Punjabi ancestry is a demographic fact, never a requirement.
What does Sikhism say about other religions?
That the one reality answers to many names and no community owns it, so non-Sikhs are not damned. The criticism lands on ritual without honesty, Hindu and Muslim alike. Scripture itself settles it: hymns by Farid, a Muslim Sufi, sit beside Hindu bhagats with the same authority as the Gurus' words.
Questions people ask
Are Sikhism and Hinduism the same religion?
No. Sikhism has its own scripture, founder and doctrines that contradict Hindu orthodoxy: one formless God, no avatars, no image worship, no caste, no priesthood, no ritual purity rules. Shared culture and words like karma and mukti feed the confusion, and so does Indian law. An explanation to Article 25 of the constitution says references to Hindus include Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists, and the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 covers anyone Sikh by religion. Sikh bodies have objected for decades; the Anand Marriage Amendment Act of 2012 partly answered them, letting Sikh marriages register under their own statute.
Why do Sikhs wear turbans and leave their hair uncut?
Uncut hair, kesh, is one of the five articles of faith given to the Khalsa in 1699, accepting the body as it was given. The turban, the dastaar, keeps it covered and neat. Sikh tradition adds that in Mughal-era Punjab such headgear marked rank, so giving it to every Sikh said nobody outranks anybody, though the Gurus did not write that down. Women may wear one too. It is not removed in public, a recurring grievance at airport and workplace searches.
Can a non-Sikh visit a gurdwara or eat at langar?
Yes, and nobody will ask what you believe. Langar is free to all by design. Remove your shoes, cover your head with a scarf from the door, wash your hands, and leave tobacco and alcohol outside. Sit on the floor facing the Guru Granth Sahib, feet not pointed toward it. Bowing is optional for visitors. Accept karah prasad in cupped hands.
Do Sikhs have to be vegetarian?
Not as a blanket rule. The Rehat Maryada forbids kutha meat, from ritual slaughter, which rules out halal and on most readings kosher, but not meat itself. Langar is always vegetarian so everyone can share it. The Akhand Kirtani Jatha, Damdami Taksal and Namdhari Sikhs hold that initiated Sikhs must be vegetarian, while many others, including many who have taken amrit, eat jhatka meat. The argument is old and unresolved.
Why do so many Sikhs share the names Singh and Kaur?
In 1699 Guru Gobind Singh named every initiated man Singh, lion, and every woman Kaur, usually rendered princess, replacing surnames that announced caste. Kaur also meant a Sikh woman keeps her own name rather than taking her father's or husband's. Many Sikhs today use Singh or Kaur as a middle name and still carry a caste-derived surname, the very thing the instruction targeted.
Is the kirpan a weapon, and is it legal to carry one?
It is a sword, which Sikhs call an article of faith carried under a duty to defend anyone under attack, including non-Sikhs. India's constitution states that carrying one counts as professing the Sikh religion. British law on bladed articles has a religious-reasons defense. In March 2006 Canada's Supreme Court ruled unanimously, in Multani v. Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys, that a Quebec school board could not stop a Sikh student wearing one. Airlines generally ban it in the cabin.
How many Sikhs are there in the world, and where do they live?
Roughly 25 to 30 million, among the larger world religions, with a wide range because few countries ask. About three quarters live in India, where the 2011 census counted 20.83 million, 1.7 percent of the country, mostly in Punjab, 57.7 percent Sikh and the only Sikh-majority state. Canada's 2021 census recorded roughly 770,000 Sikhs, and the 2021 census for England and Wales a little over 520,000. The United States asks no census question on religion, so its estimates vary widely.
What does today hold for you?
Pop in your birthday. Your reading shows up right here. No email, no account.
Try it for yourself, free
Related topics: sikhism, sikh beliefs, guru granth sahib, sikh religion explained, ten gurus, khalsa, sikh practices
